Patterns for the New Year

Well, there's been great progress with my Roman mosaic. I've got over half of the background finished and only a tiny bit of the brown ground area at the bottom left to do. That's the trouble with not having a needlework frame yet - the bottom of anything is especially hard on my hands. After that I just have the white parts of the skull to do, which I've smartly saved for last so it doesn't get stained.

I was working on the mosaic while visiting with my nephew, Benjamin, kept pointing to the skull and saying "Daddy" while giggling. I love the toddler sense of humour. If you misunderstand whatever he's saying (I'm not good at understanding toddler-speak) and repeat back the wrong word he thinks it's hilaaarious.

Anyway, I thought I'd post some patterns. One I've stitched already and one I haven't (but it will be my next quick project). This first one was inspired by a Cake Wrecks post making fun of the way teenagers talk. This particular phrase struck me as hilarious so I stitched it. Only in the pattern I've corrected all the mistakes I made and done some other changes to make it generally more attractive.

The next is a Felix the Cat cross-stitch pattern. I haven't filled in all the black because that's so annoying and boring but I've filled it in around where you'll need to do a little white stitching to show that he has two legs and fingers and all. I think it will look nice when stitched, in any case, and hopefully there are some other stitchers out there who grew up watching (and adoring) Felix cartoons.

There's only really a specific group of Felix cartoons I really like though. I love the early early Felix and I love what I *think* is the beginning of the 'new' Felix cartoons they made in the 1950s. Those ones with Poindexter and VaVoom are, for many reasons, detestable to me. I can literally remember my face spreading into a huge grin when the Felix theme song came on after I stuck the Felix tape in the VCR. Cartoon theme songs still hold some unnatural power over me. I hear the first beats of Rescue Rangers or DuckTales or Count Duckula and magically become a happy, giggling eight year old with no problems.